Let's get the one negative out of the way: The Los Angeles Lakers probably shouldn't need to rely on LeBron James, the oldest player in the NBA, to energize the team in a showdown with the Los Angeles Clippers brimming with playoff implications.

But, when one of the greatest players of all time pulls a vintage masterclass out of thin air, you live with the result — and you just enjoy being in the presence of greatness. That's the scenario the Lakers magically found themselves in on Wednesday night — the final regular-season meeting between the two squads as co-tenants of Crypto.com Arena.

After three concerningly ho-hum quarters — in execution and effort — the Lakers trailed by 21 points early in the fourth as Anthony Davis rested.

Never fear: LeBron is, somehow, still here. The 39-year-old erupted for 19 points in the period — three more than the Clippers. He sank five of seven 3-point attempts down the stretch to spearhead a furious 21-point comeback.

LeBron seemed to smell blood after drilling a (frankly, questionable) heat-check pull-up triple with 8:47 go, which put the Lakers within nine. As the great ones do, he went for the kill.

“If I'm on the floor, I gotta make plays,” he said. “Sometimes I gotta make even more plays.”

The Lakers outscored the Clippers 39-16 in the fourth on their way to probably their biggest, and certainly their most unlikely, win of the season, 116-112. In 37 minutes, LeBron posted 34 points (13-of-21 shooting), eight assists, and six assists. (As for whether he plays tomorrow against the Washington Wizards, Darvin Ham said “We'll see.”)

“Sometimes you sit on the bench, and you get to witness greatness and be a fan,” said AD. “To witness it from the sideline, it was definitely a fanboy moment.

“LeBron went into sicko mode and rattled off like 40 straight.”

Ham and LeBron aptly went the superhero route to describe what they just #witnessed.

“He had the cape tucked under his seat on the bench I guess,” said Ham. “It was time for him to whip it out.”

“It was just a zone, can't really describe it,” said LeBron. “Wish you could stay in it forever … During it, you don't feel anything. You just have a superpower out there.”

These weren't just out-of-body logo bombs. The Lakers were openly targeting James Harden on switches, and LeBron capitalized within the “flow of the offense.”

“I wasn't taking ill-advised shots,” he noted.

“He just got fire,” said Darvin Ham, “Thank God he's on our team.”

 

Rui Hachimura (17 points) and D'Angelo Russell (18 points) keyed the comeback with clutch crunch-time buckets off LeBron set-ups. The 21-year veteran scored or assisted on 11 of the Lakers' last 13 field goals, and 30 of their 36 points in the fourth.

“In those moments you’re like, ‘We can win this,'” Austin Reaves said about the comeback gaining steam. “Obviously, LeBron had an unbelievable performance, but everyone stepped up around him, got stops and competed really hard in the fourth.”

 

The Lakers, having lost two of their first three games post-All-Star break, needed a spark in the worst way. They were oddly lethargic and sloppy in the first half — as if they weren't mired in a brutal race to avoid the play-in tournament in a jam-packed Western Conference.

The Clippers are one of seven playoff teams the Lakers (32-28) face over their next eight games.

“Every game is important for us, especially at this moment,” said LeBron. “We have to approach it that way. But tonight was a really good test for us. It was a great test, being down against one of the best teams in the league, on their home floor, and being able to keep our composure, to weather the storm in that fourth quarter was very key for us.”

“We needed one of these,” Ham said. “We needed to dig deep.”